Hugh, sorry to hear about your new purchase, the Chrysler LeBaron. These
cars have a horrible reputation in durability as they age, and I think your
old VW was a much better long term car. Now, reputation, is just that,
reputation. It might be true, it might not.
Now, back to our oil. You can take it or leave it, but the multi grade is
by far the better oil, especially for the winter months (but even on a hot
summer day, a 20w40 will give much better engine protection because of what
is called "viscosity index, remember, engine lubrication is my
specialization). I don't know off hand why the multiweight increased your
visible smoke, but keep one thing in mind: less visible smoke does not
necessarily mean better lubrication. Clearly the engine will have to be
rebuilt in the near future. I can see if you want drive it for a while,
and till then, also want to avoid the embracement of a seriously smoking
car. And at this point, it may be too late for the oil to make any
difference. But remember, the longer you drive it, its not getting better
internally. In fact, when an engine reaches a certain point of wear level,
the wear rate often accelerates. I don't know where the noises are coming
from, but if they are related to bearings, I would stop driving it ASAP
before it gets worse and more expensive to fix.
D^2
At 12:35 PM 4/7/2002 -0500, you wrote:
>I dumped out all the old oil, which was an amalgam of multigrades
>and some snake oil "Stop Leak" I mistakenly put in, and replaced it with
>good old straight 40W. I should never have listened to the so called advice
>I received from various parties. As they say in the army, If it ain't
>broke, don't fix it. By the time I got back to the house, in heavy rain,
>the car was smoking about 90% less than before. This is my only good news
>of the day!
>
>The engine is making some mysterious noises over and above the obviously
>leak in the exhaust which I intend to track down today. I figure if I can
>keep the car running for another month I will get over this hump and then be
>able to pay serious attention to the car's problems.
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